November Rides

Maybe I should do these on a weekly basis, instead of a massive monthly photo dump...  

Monday morning ride - so calm 

made the river very still and smooth and made for some very clear reflections. 

Ice starting to form on the water overnight. 

Apparently dropping to -10°C.... 

and me, I was wearing shorts... 

it may be time for pants soon... but NOT YET!!!

More reflections - south train bridge. Trees are now pretty much devoid of leaves and the landscape has turned into a grey-brown blur. 

Downtown. Geese.

Downtown again. A bit closer. Fewer Geese. 

Wednesday morning ride - apparently a beaver decided this trail needed more challenges. 

SO MANY GEESE! There were HUNDREDS of them on the mid-river sandbars by the South bridges. (all the little dots going off into the distance!) . 

I didn't get out for a ride until late afternoon on Thursday - it was worth the wait. by then it was +10°C and totally calm - again I encountered glass-smooth water - but this time with clear blue skies reflected in them. This is the Broadway Bridge, above. 

Traffic Bridge (or Victoria Bridge, depending who you ask). 

University Bridge. 

trail with trees devoid of leaves. 

The glass-smooth water only extended as far as the weir... beyond that... not so still. CPR (Canadian Pacific Railways) Bridge. 

Had it been smooth north of the weir, I might have extended my ride to the new north bridge and try to get reflected shots of ALL the bridges... 

As I got to the south end of my loop, I spotted a beaver out on the water 

There are a lot of them around. Or evidence of a lot of them. I don't OFTEN see them out and about - but they are mainly nocturnal animals... 

Grand Trunk Bridge (now owned by CNR - Canadian National Railways), seen from the Gordie Howe Bridge. 

Gordie Howe Bridge. 

Long shadows in the late afternoon. It was only 4:30pm... but already the sun was heading down. 

Friday I did the loop of the bridges again - but a little earlier in the day. 

Again, there were HUNDREDS of geese 

AS I headed north on Spadina, something spooked them and the ALL took to flight! 

Hundreds of them - taking off in all directions! 

it was quite the sight. 

So nice that Spadina is open again. 

Saturday I took Keiran to Tap Dance - which they are doing again. Normally Amanda would take them, but Amanda was doing a Yoga workshop all weekend, so it fell to me. I had almost an hour to kill, and didn't want to just sit inside, because it was so nice out... but I also feel a little reluctant to go for a ride - as I could ride half an hour out... and then have a flat tire! (it's happened!) so I went to the park just south of the dance studio and rode around there for a bit... 

While there I spotted a hare! 

It was kind enough to sit still long enough for me to get my canera out and take a few pictures. 

winter colours coming in...

More October Rides

 I started October with a few posts about individual rides... 

Here are the REST of the pics from rides throughout the month of October. (well, the rest of the ones I'm going to share... I take WAY TOO MANY pics on rides to possibly post ALL of them) 

You know you're still MetalAF when you ride past the counter and it clicks over to '666'... 

(Okay... we had to ride past it FOUR TIMES to get it to 666...)

Smoke... AGAIN...!? I thought we were DONE with this apocalyptic haze. 

Bike in the water. 

Getting chillier - Amanda broke out the mitts and helmet liners. 

Some trees still full of yellow leaves. 

More colourful leaves. 

in other places the leaves have all dropped leaving a dreary grey-brown landscape. 

Turbo Beaver gives zero fucks about your puny chainlink fence. 

Took a few trips out to Chief Whitecap park to see if I could spot any of the massive flocks of Sandhill Cranes that pass through here in October during their fall migration. I did spot a few - but not as many as in previous years. 

I got out the Purple Karate Monkey and went for a few rides on that this month. 

Work continued on the Spadina South Multi-use trail conversion. 

early in the month they closed it off entirely - putting up fences at either end... on teh weekends, though, people usually opened them up and went through anyway. 

One weekend afternoon I took a tour through. 

Looks like they're just about finished with the - repaving. 

More cranes. 

Actual fog - not smoke, for once! 

Incredibly still morning. 

Maybe it would be easier if I did these weekly... 

Oh, also I tried doing inktober/artober challenge again this year - I only posted things about half the days. There was a pretty strong BIBYLE theme to all of my drawings this year. You can see them on my Instagram page or over on my Art Blog.